During this planning, packing, and getting ready to move I find myself going through what many others go through, "Stuffitis". I had such a hard time just giving things away I liked or knew I could get money for. But then I remembered how good it felt when I received office furniture on my freecycle list or the chairs I received that match my mini dining room table.

But I had to go one step further. I had to visualize my new home without so much "stuff". I have to purge all of the dead weight in my life. It reminded me of a story I was told by a missionary who returned from 3 years of missions in a foreign country with her family of four.

She collected antiques. There were many and they were beautiful. She specifically remembered a spinning wheel that was very old. But the Lord told her to sell it all. I'm not sure if He told her He would give it back to her ten fold or not. But somehow that's in the back of my mind. The whole family was agreeable and sold off "everything" that they could not take with them. This included giving up a large, beautiful house that was owned by her father. The sister was given the house instead.

When they returned to the states they were given a very small two bedroom house that needed to be almost completely rebuilt. (They had three daughters by that time.) But after all was said and done, the missionary explained how the house was turning out just as she wanted, people from church were giving her antiques, and how one of the ladies at church even asked her if she wanted an old spinning wheel.

Material things will come and go but if you're not living life then those material things have no value anyway. So while this is a difficult journey for our entire family, I know there's an end in sight shortly.

Side Note: I'm starting to think this move is harder on the children since they both recently started working real jobs and mostly work nights. By the time they get home, we're all too tired to get our schedules together and synchronized. Then on their days off they are supposed to pack and clean. Well it's not happening as we thought it would and therefore there's chaos in the house. Unfortunately all of our reinforcements are overly busy too. So my husband and I decided to work as fast and hard as we could for a few hours each Saturday & Sunday and a little each night. Then while writing this article and side note I realized; if we didn't have so much stuff, we wouldn't be going through this chaos.

Think about that and do your best to dunk your junk into the trash, have a garage sale, or put it on freecycle .

©2006 Susie Glennan

BIO: Susie Glennan has been happily married since 1982 and is a mom to three, 16, 18, 20, mother in law to one, 24, and grandmother of two, 21 mos & 4 yrs. She ran an in home daycare for 8 years, home schooled for 8 years, taught many different classes for home schoolers, subbed for LA City Schools and taught at Ventura College. She’s been the proud President of Busy Woman, Inc. located at www.thebusywoman.com and has been consulting on scheduling and time management since 1986.